Architect’s Newspaper

As an ardent newbie to the ice creaming making game, I appreciate and commend Il Laboratorio del Gelato’s obvious dedication to their craft. It must be the German in me that particularly responds to the space’s precision, cleanliness and austerity. Appropriately dubbed The Cooler, the lab’s LES storefront/kitchen was designed by New York-based architects HWKN (Hollwich Kushner). The design allows for total transparency; Passersby can peep through the large windows and observe the entire production process, from the delivery of the ingredients to the point of sale – all performed in white lab coats, of course.

The depressing strip of grey concrete nothing-ness you see in the photo above runs through East Downtown LA, right along the LA River. It’s the site of the Los Angeles Cleantech Corridor and Green District Competition, recently announced by SCI-Arc (The Southern California Institute of Architecture) and The Architect’s Newspaper. The hope is to transform this zone into “an integrated economic, residential and cultural engine for the city,” and asks architects, landscape architects, designers, engineers, urban planners, and environmental professionals to challenge conventional wisdom about civic development and green architecture to create a thriving, livable new space.